“You brought my wife back into my life”
Guardiant’s Comprehensive Care transforms a patient’s lifestyle, prescriptions, and restores trust in her physician.
Executive Summary
When evaluating the quality of healthcare, patient satisfaction has increasingly become a key performance indicator and overall customer satisfaction metric. In fact, over half of healthcare executives say patient satisfaction is one of their top three priorities. In this patient/member case, Guardiant Comprehensive Care transforms a patient’s healthcare situation from what had been a negative experience to one of high satisfaction. Through the use of Guardiant’s Comprehensive Care Management virtual “toolbox”, which includes biometric data, high-tech monitoring, precision-based screening tools, and an array of other advanced technology, a 67-year-old patient’s health and her trust in her physicians is restored. Her husband is able to thank Guardiant Health for, “bringing my wife back into my life.”
Problem/Challenge
“Linda” is a 67-year old female patient who suffers from chronic pain, has a history of back surgeries, and has bipolar disorder (depression and anxiety), hypertension, and fibromyalgia. Compounding Linda’s situation is the fact that, due to COVID-19, she was unable to see her doctors as much as she needed to. She was also dissatisfied with the care she received from her doctors because she did not feel they were addressing all her issues, but rather just the one issue for what the doctor specialized in. Complicating Linda’s health situation was that she was on multiple medications, which greatly increased her risk of serious side effects.
Solution
Guardiant Comprehensive Care was initially brought in to help her with confusion, concentration issues, instability issues, irretractable pain, and massive depression. We began first by performing a full intake/assessment on the patient, which included a complete medical history. Additionally, a pharmacist reviewed all of Linda’s current medications, which allowed Guardiant Health to determine she had been taking redundant medications- pharmaceuticals of similar type and the same class but under different names. These redundant medications were creating side effects which included confusion, lethargy, and severe balance issues. Guardiant Health immediately identified Linda’s biggest risk resulted from the multiple and often redundant medications she was on, and that these needed to be managed properly with some being reduced, and others- which were being duplicated, discontinued altogether. Over about a 4-week period, Guardiant Health worked through a process to alter Linda’s medications. Rapid success in this area allowed us to gain Linda’s trust and confidence, which in turn allowed us to work on her pain management, bipolar disorder, and mental health issues. This led us to conclude she needed more intensive management, so our team reviewed her case with several psychiatrists and found one who was qualified to manage Linda’s challenging mental health situation. We also coordinated with pain management services to better manage her pain medication and treat her pain.
Results/Impact
Within 4 weeks of adjusting her medications, Linda and her husband reported that she was feeling back to her normal self again, noting that she was able to concentrate, carry on conversations, and that her stability had improved greatly, to the point where she didn’t feel like she was going to fall. Additionally, her pain management became controlled as a result of her adjusted medications. Linda’s improvement resulted in reduced spending for treatment, reduced dependency on pharmaceuticals and overall care, and significant quality of life improvement. Her results were dramatic, with her husband telling her doctors, “you brought my wife back into my life. It feels like she’s a different woman.” Additionally, by managing her medications, we were able to regain Linda’s trust in physicians, because we had addressed health concerns that no one else had by successfully treating her confusion and balance issues. Guardiant’s Comprehensive Care virtual tools and technology played a key role in her treatment by allowing us to track and monitor her blood pressure, any side effects, pulse, body weight, and other vitals to ensure she was stable; all remotely from the comfort of her home. The on-the-spot ability to harness this biometric data from a phone call or a telemedicine visit for tracking provided us with critical data points to ensure her treatment would be successful, which in turn, led to an advanced level of overall patient satisfaction.
